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10.23.2007

Just when you thought you’d heard the last of wild, gone-too-soon, drugged-out troubadour Gram Parsons, up pops one more offering from the legendary cosmic country crooner: Gram Parsons Archives Vol. 1: The Flying Burrito Brothers Live at the Avalon Ballroom 1969, a dual-disc release with 27 of the best live Parsons tracks yet.
A pioneer and lightning rod of the country-rock movement that would later morph into alt-country, Parsons’ time was short, but his music continues to be a fundamental influence on artists as varied as Emmylou Harris to Ryan Adams. He was only 26 when he died of a drug overdose in 1973, but Parsons had already managed to mold the kind of music career others only dream about.

10.23.2007

Gibson proudly sponsored the highly coveted Living Legend award at this year’s Classic Rock Magazine's Roll of Honour Awards. The Living Legend award went to Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. The prestigious awards were held at London’s Landmark Hotel.

10.22.2007

Zeroing in on the instrument that’ll capture the exact sound you’ve set your mind on is a lot like finding love. Lots of trial and error, lots of patience.
Former Taking Back Sunday guitarist Fred Mascherino found his perfect match some years back—his beloved Gibson SG Special. He did it intentionally, and economically, hitting one of those sprawling, well-stocked instrument retailers and playing every single guitar in the store until he felt a spark.
“I knew there was a sound I was looking for, I just wasn’t getting that,” the now-The Color Fred singer/guitarist says. “So it was a search I went on.”
You might narrow your search a little, though, by eyeing some famous players who found their stringed soulmate and focusing in on why the match worked so well.

10.22.2007

Now here’s a band who knows how to put on a decent live show.
The Cribs heckle their fans, set off riots on a whim, and don’t think twice about engaging in the kind of deranged behavior that leads to serious, often life-threatening injuries, all in the name of entertainment.
At one show, the entire front row turned around to protest the greasy British pop-punk trio’s unruly behavior. At another, lead singer and guitarist Ryan Jarman took off his shirt and dove headfirst into the pit where he was promptly mistaken by the venue’s bouncers for a rabid fan, causing quite the impressive tussle.

10.22.2007

Coming of age in the mid ’90s, the Redwalls’ Logan Baren and Andrew Langer knew one thing for certain: they wanted no part of the post-Nirvana grunge sound that prevailed at the time.
“It seemed like there were just 10 bands in existence, all trying to sound like Pearl Jam,” says Langer, who plays lead guitar for the Chicago-based group. “It was like a 10th generation version of what the Seattle bands initially set out to do. There was a lot of crap.”
“That music was bad,” agrees Baren, who handles lead vocals and rhythm guitar. “We didn’t want anything to do with it.”

10.19.2007

Los Angeles-based combo Endeverafter harks back to the days when bands played hard, drank hard, and often had a hard time steering clear of overnight stints in the slammer. Michael Grant, the prime mover behind the quartet, has a blues-inflected wail that carries traces of Cinderella’s Tom Keifer, not to mention Axl Rose—influences that’ve already endeared the band to contemporaries as varied as Bret Michaels, Fall Out Boy, Trapt, and Fuel, all of whom they’ve shared stages with in recent months. Endeverafter’s excellent debut album, Kiss or Kill, hits stores this month. Though it’s Endeverafter’s first full-length effort, Grant says it’s been a long time coming. “I’ve become much more in tune with the songwriting craft,” he says. “I got a lot of aggression out during the era when I was in all those death metal bands. There’s still aggression here, but it’s more sexual, more sensual—and that’s a lot more fun than fighting any day.”

10.19.2007

Forget Elvis, God bless him. It was Chuck Berry—with his motormouth tales of hot rods and romance, and his freight-train take on T-Bone Walker—who invented rock and roll, shaking country and blues until it clattered out of radios all over the world and held a whole generation spellbound. To this day, Berry is the guitarist and songwriter all guitarists and songwriters must pass though. There is no getting anywhere down the road of rock and roll without paying a toll to him. The slurring doublestops that honk from his Gibson like a whole horn section, the revved-up shuffle of his right hand, the joyful shouts of Go! Go! In sound and spirit, it stands with the best that rock and roll has ever offered.

10.18.2007

If it wasn’t quite a pop coronation, the final gig of Rilo Kiley’s Under the Blacklight tour nonetheless had the distinct air of triumph about it, and for good reason. While some pundits and fans have groused that Rilo Kiley’s recent, studio-burnished big label release somehow betrayed the band’s indie roots, guitarist Blake Sennett would argue that the move was in fact their artistic emancipation, a sensibility they gleefully indulged in an energetic, 95-plus minute set before a large, adoring hometown crowd that hung on their every word and gesture.
Much can—and has—been made of the relationship between Sennett and lead singer/fellow former child star Jenny Lewis, both of whom spent much of the show bouncing joyously from one corner of the stage to another. But the former lovers, band focal points, and tunesmiths turned even Blacklight’s “Breaking Up,” the autobiographical track that’s their only full songwriting collaboration on the album, into a full-blown celebration, with Lewis ringing out the news on cowbell.

10.18.2007

It’s true that the American blues tradition is replete with stories of struggle and loss, but for Chicago bluesman Lurrie Bell, those clichés became heartbreakingly real this year. In a year that saw life imitating art, the guitarist in January endured the death of his partner, photographer Susan Greenberg, the mother of Bell’s toddler daughter; and in May, he said farewell to his father, Chicago harp master Carey Bell, who died at the age of 70.
“I’ve accepted the things that have happened with my family, the people that I love,” 48-year-old Bell says. “I figure it’s an act of God. It’s up to me to accept that and carry on. I just wake up every day, and I say, ‘Today is gonna be good.’ In a way, it all makes me stronger, because even with all the bad luck, I know I’m still hangin’ in there. And with this new record, I’m gonna be able to tell the people exactly how I feel.”

10.18.2007

Country singer Gretchen Wilson is a study in contradictions. Case in point: the title track from her latest One of the Boys, on which she gets to the heart of the matter, distilling her hands-on-hips tough girl exterior down to surprising vulnerability. “I know I don’t act much like a lady but I still need to be somebody’s baby,” she wails in the song’s chorus. “Yeah, you might find me making too much noise, but I’m more than just one of the boys.”
Sweet and salty as the margaritas she sings about downing in Les Paul-fueled barnburners like “All Jacked Up” and “You Don’t Have to Go Home,” Wilson has written or co-written most all the tracks on her three albums, starting with her star-making debut, 2004’s Here for the Party. She calls One of the Boys her most personal disc to date, admitting that there are a couple of songs—the devastating break-up confessional “To Tell You the Truth,” for one—that she wouldn’t dare sing live for fear of crying.